New Sense

In the words of House:

Ah, my birthday. Normally I’d put on a festive hat and celebrate the fact that the Earth has circled the Sun one more time; I really didn’t think it was going to make it this year, but darn it if it wasn’t the little planet that could all over again

Honestly, Im not as cynical of celebrating birthdays as House but I am very critical of it coming just once a year. I believe everyone should celebrate their birth every day of their life… Actually its not crazy as it sounds, whats the whole point of celebrating every 365.25 days anyway? (Im just saying)

Actually I think birthdays are more for moms, I dont think all the struggle I have done thru my life is even a small faction of what I caused her while I was in her womb…

So while i receive wishes from ppl all day; with every wish, I remember my mom once more

Lets talk 26…

26 is…

• The only single number between a square (25 = 52) and a cube (27 = 33).

• The number of sides in a rhombicuboctahedron.
• The atomic number of iron
• The number of spacetime dimensions in bosonic string theory.
• A 2003 novel by Leo McKay, Jr..
• The number of miles in a marathon rounded down (26 miles and 385 yards).
• Often the number of episodes in a television program each year; this allows one new show per week for half the year, and one rerun per week for the rest of the year.
• The age at which males can no longer be drafted in the United States

and last but not least a number that I shall carry as my age for a year from today.

PS: All info snagged from the wikipedia page

Typography: IF by Rudyard Kipling from George Horne on Vimeo.

IF…..

IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
‘ Or walk with Kings – nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!

- Rudyard Kipling

With the increasing acceptance of twitter and facebook as a preferred method of sharing information, a lot of bloggers I enjoyed reading are slowly moving away from blogging. As the count in my google reader decreases day by day, the number of tweets and facebook updates have been consistently increasing. In all honesty I dont blame the bloggers from moving on…

Twitter and Facebook have steadily become attractive replacements for blogging. Twitter’s 140 character “in the moment” microblogging allows immediate feedback, people respond almost immediately to a funny quote while back during blogging’s prime you would have to wait until ppl checked their RSS aggregator or did their ritualistic daily visit to your blog. Facebook provides an easier and seemingly more attractive alternative, dont know what to say but still want to appreciate the author… hit the “like” button and you are done.

Facebook and Twitter’s allure is also biased for the reason that they have slowly become the one stop spot for everything. With people sharing in the same sites there is hardly a need to remember blog URLs or keep in track of multiple sites… A long time back this very feature made livejournal my choice of blogging platform but now things have changed and my livejournal friend circle is only a shadow of what it was in its prime.

On the bright side, there is a part of me thats thankful for this change. Facebook has given me a lot of readers who otherwise would never have found my blog. One look at my notes on my facebook page and you will notice that there have been regular comments and ‘likes’ on my posts, the very same posts have attracted comparatively less comments on the blog itself!

One of the truly bothering signs of the overall trend has been that people are slowly getting turned away from long posts. If you are reading this line there is a probability that you are a part of the minority that feel 141 characters is one character too much. Another alarming trend has been that writers are slowly getting tuned to the conciseness of tweets… who can blame them, with a whole generation of mobile devices coming along its much easier to read/respond to a tweet than a blog post.

One of the strengths of blogging has been the lifespan of a blog post. Most tweets become irrelevant after a few minutes but a blog post’s relevance continues depending on the topic and the writer in question. Its this attribute of the blog that can help it survive this takeover from other platforms.

When blogging fever had hit its prime years ago, there was a sudden advent of blogs appearing everywhere; now with the drive changing direction this might actually be for the best. The surviver in this exodus will most probably be the genuine high quality writers and their insistence in holding on to blogging will hopefully bring back the blog to its niche best.

Personally I have always spoken better thru my blog than thru my tweets or my status messages, so I do hope the hay days of blogging arent behind us.

Koi Khalish Hai Hawaon Mein Bin Tere…*

During my second visit to Honey Valley we had trekked a nearby mountain and were approaching the peak when this stand of tall grass caught my eye. It kept bowing to the strong wind that caressed it but the moment the wind suppressed it rose back up again.

* is a line from the song “Bin Tere” from the soundtrack of “I Hate Luv Storys”. For some reason this song reminded of this moment and this photograph.
* loosely translated means – “Even the wind pricks me, without you”